Welcome back – we hope you all had a wonderful Easter break.  We certainly did.

We have had a week of consolidation.

The curriculum says that we have to teach ‘non-chronological reports’.  Alongside ‘fronted adverbials’ and ‘subitising’, this is a bit of primary school gobbledegook that seems designed to confuse everyone rather than inspire anyone.

Guess what?  They are reports that are not in order!

By the way, fronted adverbials are words and phrases describing a verb, that come (guess where…!) at the front of a sentence.  Subitising?  Four year olds can tell you that one – it is being able to look at a set of similar objects and know how many there are (without counting them).  It is part of the very early maths curriculum.

Sorry – back to our NCRs.

We are just calling them reports, and in this case they will become information texts (or leaflets).  As you know, children have been asked to research an animal (or fish or bird) of their choice.  They have had some time in class for this, but if they could gather a bit more information in lieu of the normal homework that would be good.  They will then spend some time compiling the information under sub-headings, adding in ‘Fun Facts’ and ‘Did you know?’ sections, and practising the use of bullet points.  Technically bullet points should have semi-colons after each item (except the last one, which should have a full stop).

Computing this week has seen the children working on their internet safety websites.  The technical content this week was for them to understand the idea of embedding code in a page to refer to another page.  For example, instead of copying and pasting a picture, or saving and inserting it, children practised how to embed the code for the picture, so that the code pointed to the original picture’s address.  These days, embedding things like YouTube URLs has become an important concept and skill.

Maths this week has seen one group finish off the area and perimeter module, and another work on statistics – mainly line graphs, tables and timetables.

Science – as part of the humans topic, this week’s session looked at old age.  Certainly made me feel old.

Topic this week had a research focus.  We had an extended session answering seven key questions about Mayan culture.

It has been great this week to get outside – your children have learned both tennis and rounders in the sunshine.  The grass in the field and the paddock have been cut and everything has a more summery feel.  Let’s hope that continues.

PSHE this week (and next) covered the important topic of first aid.  Apart from all the horror stories of childhood accidents, we focused on how to deal with head injuries and choking today.  Important topics for sure.

With best wishes for a calm and sunny weekend.

The Y5 Team.

p.s. There are still a couple of places available on our Maths Made Clear sessions for parents.  These are at 4.30pm on Thursdays, and will uncover all the secrets of how we teach various maths topics to your children, right from Y1 to Y6.  We did the first one yesterday and it seemed to interest the participants.  Please let Dr Loader if you would like to join us – even for the odd session.